To address today’s challenges of decreased budgets and increased workloads, both local government managers and elected officials are embracing the concept of collaboration in new and innovative ways. Collaboration has proven to be an effective tool for jurisdictions to join with others—including other local governments, private sector organizations, and nonprofits—to achieve goals and deliver services that they may not have been able to accomplish on their own.

While there has been a general push by residents, elected officials, consultants, and academics toward the use of collaboration as a key solution to governments’ problems, these proponents sometimes fail to recognize that collaborations do not always achieve the goals for which they were established.

While collaboration is appropriately viewed as an option for local governments, the real issue surrounding collaboration is that often the costs and benefits associated with it are not fully realized, nor are strategies effectively evaluated that will motivate the collaborative effort.

The concepts to do so can be complex and confusing, and there have been few tools that give managers the ability to fully “talk through” a collaboration concept and ask such fundamental questions as: Should we engage in a collaboration? If so, what form of collaboration will have the highest likelihood of success?

Defining the Concept

Collaboration is ‘‘the linking or sharing of information, resources, activities, and capabilities by organizations to achieve an outcome that could not be achieved by the organizations separately.”1 Collaboration refers to arrangements in which all partners to the arrangement incur costs and share benefits related to their efforts.

These efforts are different from outsourcing or contracting where a separate entity handles certain aspects of service delivery. Because of resident/stakeholder expectations and interactions, local governments may find that those service delivery options in which they create a “partnership” allow an alternative approach to service delivery, yet maintain a level of responsibility between the local government and its constituents.

Is Collaboration Right for Us?

Working through a unique collaboration of its own, ICMA’s Center for Management Strategies has teamed up with the Alliance for Innovation (AFI) and Arizona State University’s (ASU) Center for Urban Innovation (ICMA-AFI-ASU) to determine the factors associated with both successful and unsuccessful collaborations.

Its findings suggest that having a discussion with all stakeholders as to the costs and benefits expected from collaboration—beyond finances alone—as well as a thorough understanding of the environment within which the collaboration will be situated, will do much to contribute to a successful evaluation of a collaboration opportunity.

These conversations can help to identify the “soft costs and benefits” that might be realized in a collaboration. Soft costs include the governance and the monitoring costs. If a collaboration might lead to reduced cost but involve staff cuts, there may be morale and political costs that must be explicitly evaluated as part of a cost-benefit approach.

ICMA’s recent survey of more than 1,000 managers highlights some of the most important soft benefits associated with collaborations.2 Bringing staff from your unit together with those from other units in a collaborative environment can improve the problem-solving process not only for the problem at hand but also for other problems on which the collaborative could work in the future.

Furthermore, these types of conversations can build relationships as well as trust and credibility in overcoming barriers to working on other issues. While cost savings or revenue enhancements might also be benefits, these soft costs must also be explicitly identified as part of the determination of whether a jurisdiction should invest the resources in such a collaborative effort.

Begin the Conversation: Know Thy Service

The ICMA-AFI-ASU research project identified a consistent set of factors that tend to be associated with success and others associated with failure in collaborative arrangements. These factors should be part of any conversation about entering a collaboration and fall into two main categories: service-oriented factors and community-oriented factors.

A discussion should begin with a full understanding of exactly what service/project the community is targeting for collaboration. Communities, for example, may want to explore a collaboration on “public safety,” but that encompasses a vast array of specific services.

Is the community interested in sharing building, operating, and maintenance responsibilities of a shared forensics crime lab? Patrol officers? Shared purchasing arrangement for capital equipment like patrol cars? In order to begin the discussion, the community needs to be clear about exactly what service is the focus.

Seven characteristics associated with the service/project type can determine whether or not a collaborative arrangement is likely to help achieve desired goals:

• 1. Asset specificity. This represents the degree to which the service relies on investment in specialized infrastructure (e.g., fire trucks, water pipes, treatment plants ) or technical expertise (e.g., legal, economic, environmental), which can make collaboration difficult due to a lack of suppliers to compete at the quality level needed by the community.In these situations, collaboration opportunities may be limited, but other alternative service delivery options may still be appropriate or viable. Higher asset specificity also suggests that it is difficult to adapt the investments to produce another service.3
• 2. Contract specification and monitoring. There needs to be clearly specified expectations among the partners as to which costs, benefits, and management services are to be shared and which entity is responsible for which activity. Services that are harder to specify in a contract or agreement, more difficult to supervise, or require greater performance management expertise are less likely to be successfully produced through collaboration.4
• 3. Labor intensity. Generally, services that are more labor intensive in their delivery and that replicate similar services in other jurisdictions represent the best opportunities for collaboration. An example of this concept is seen in a collaborative effort involving 18 municipalities in Cook County and Lake County, Illinois.These local governments, motivated by the national economic downturn, believed that they might realize some cost saving by relying on the practice of bulk purchasing. The effort has led to savings of approximately $500,000 after the first year for the combined group and involved labor intensive purchasing work that was similarly provided in all of the 18 jurisdictions.
• 4. Capital intensity. Generally, services that are more capital intensive, yet offer wider benefits than could be realized by a single jurisdiction alone are more amenable to collaborative approaches. In an example of this concept, Westlake, Texas (population 1,065), and Keller, Texas (population 41,923), were facing water shortages in the late 1990s. To grow both financially and physically, these two communities needed to construct water storage tanks.They began a plan to develop their water system and together constructed an elevated joint-use water tank. The combined tank allows each city to maintain its separate water system operations and represented the first time that a joint-use tank was designed and installed in Texas.Each community shared in the $3.1 million cost, saving each city more than $1 million in construction costs. Each also experienced reduced costs for maintenance through an interlocal agreement for maintenance of the tank while maintaining their independent control over their share of the joint tank.
• 5. Costs. Service/project costs can drive the interest in collaboration by a local government. Costs can also limit the pool of potential partner organizations that may be able to participate in the delivery of more expensive services. When considering available partners, managers must be cognizant of the other participants’ financial position, as each must be able to contribute meaningfully to the success of the effort.
• 6. Management competencies. When discussing costs and benefits of potential collaborative arrangements, communities must be sensitive to the expertise—or lack thereof—for managing the various aspects of a service/project. The greater the managerial expertise on staff related to a service, the more likely a collaborative arrangement can achieve success. A lack of expertise will increase the costs of the collaboration perhaps to the point of exceeding the value of the benefits.
• 7. Administrative stability. The importance of stability among team members should not be underestimated. High staff turnover creates uncertainties, changes in policy directions, and undermines previously established levels of trust. Turnover is to be expected, and managers should be aware of the trend and likelihood of additional changes in the short- and long-term future, and they should ensure that succession planning is addressed in any collaboration plan.

Discussing and understanding these seven characteristics can influence the likelihood of success in achieving goals when a community delivers a service through collaboration. Fully understanding the service, however, is only one aspect of informing a decision. The other involves explicit awareness of the environment within which the community operates.

Understand the Environment

Communities create strategic plans after an environmental scan identifies factors that can impact a community from both an internal and external perspective. Similarly, understanding these environmental context factors can assist a management team in determining if collaboration is even possible, much less destined for success:

• 1. Possible public partners. Before considering collaboration, a manager should fully understand the number and capacity of potential public partners in the area and identify which can be legitimate partners in a collaborative service delivery effort.
• 2. Possible private partners. In addition to possible public sector partners, managers should be aware of private sector firms that may be viable partners. As with potential public sector partners, private partners may be limited to the extent that the community or region is home to enough competent firms to support a competitive marketplace.
• 3. Possible nonprofit partners. Nonprofit groups are highly capable of partnering in a service delivery collaborative. As with private partners, the size of the local supply of nonprofits will also be driven by the type of service under consideration, as well as the size of the region in which the community is located.
• 4. Political environment. Managers should recognize the support or obstacles that exist among elected officials of the community. Elected officials may be supportive of the concept generally but cautious or even opposed to collaboration on a specific service.
• 5. Fiscal/economic health. The community’s fiscal condition may be a motivating factor in wanting to pursue collaboration. Those that are financially challenged may find it more difficult to identify partners with which to collaborate.
  Communities in a better fiscal position are more likely to be successful in collaborative arrangements. Decisions on whether to collaborate need to take a community’s fiscal health into account, as well as the fiscal condition of any partners, be they public, private, or nonprofit.

• 6. Employee/labor relations. Different communities face different kinds of labor and employee relationships that can create pressure on collaborative discussions. There may be resistance to any service alternatives that could impact public sector employment levels. 
  In these situations, the costs of pursuing collaborative service delivery can increase significantly or decision making be made more difficult. Involving employees in these discussions and seeking their input can be productive.

• 7. Public interest. Some services are naturally more likely to attract the attention of residents than others. Changes to those services for which residents are particularly connected are more likely to meet resistance. Involving stakeholders in these discussions can help ensure that all points of view are heard and accurate information is shared.

Collaboration Sounds Good, Now What?

If the dialogue described previously identifies supportive information about the service being considered and a receptive environment in which the collaboration could occur, the community will then need to decide which type of arrangement makes the most sense for it. Here are the most common forms of collaborative service delivery:

Public-private partnerships. The form that has received the most attention in the past decade is collaboration that involves a public agency working with a private firm. In truth, this is not as common as one might be led to believe.

While contracting services out to private firms is common, such contracting is not the same arrangement as collaboration. Public-private partnerships, in which a public jurisdiction and a private firm jointly share in the costs and benefits of a service arrangement, are truly collaborations.

These arrangements can be challenging because without the right partner or clearly defined purpose and responsibilities, different motivations can be pursued by the partners (service versus profit) and can impact the viability of the partnership.

Public-nonprofit partnerships. While public-private partnerships receive more attention, local officials should be aware of the potential advantages nonprofit partners might afford for certain kinds of services. One aspect that increases the likelihood of successful collaboration is that, like their public sector counterparts, nonprofits do not work on a profit motive.

On the other hand, while there are a number of potential nonprofits in a community, the number of them capable of being a partner may be more limited, depending on the type of service under consideration. A nonprofit with the expertise to manage a waste incinerator facility, for example, may be difficult to find, but one that has deep talent at operating a community homeless shelter may be an easily identifiable partner with which to address a community need.

Public-public partnerships. Collaboration between units of government is by far the most common form of partnership involving public services. Many may be informal arrangements between abutting local governments, while some are represented by more formalized agreements.

The arrangements involve at least two units of government, but can include more. The earlier example of the 18 municipalities in Lake and Cook counties highlights one type of public-public arrangement known as a “horizontal partnership” between governments at the same level.

There are also examples of vertical partnerships in which two or more units of government at different levels collaborate. Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, for example, have an extensive system of intergovernmental agreements for a wide range of services.

In the area of public safety, the city police department provides basic patrol services for the city and any other parts of the county not patrolled by another municipal police department. At the same time, the county provides jail services for the entire county, including all jail services for Charlotte.

While much has been written that suggests collaboration is the answer to problems and issues facing local governments today, managers must understand what collaboration is and what it is not. While significantly different from privatization or contracting, collaboration can offer excellent alternatives for service delivery if the service is right and the community environment will support the concept.

Understanding the appropriateness of a collaborative effort as well as the environment in which it will occur, and selecting the right form will help ensure that the effort can be a successful and viable solution to the issues and challenges facing local governments today.

Endnotes

1 Bryson, J., B. Crosby, M. Stone., and E. Saunoi-Sandgren. (2009). “Designing and Managing Cross-sector Collaboration: A Case Study in Reducing Traffic Congestion.” The Business of Government (Winter/Fall):78–81.

2 O’Leary, Rosemary and Catherine Gerard. (2013). “Collaborative Governance and Leadership: A 2012 Survey of Local Government Collaboration.” 2013 The ICMA Municipal Year Book. Washington, D.C.: International City/County Management Association.

3 Warner, Mildred and Amir Hefetz. (2010) “Service Characteristics and Contracting: The Importance of Citizen Interest and Competition.” 2010 The Municipal Year Book. Washington, D.C.: International City/County Management Association. 4 Ibid.